History Literature / TheYiddishPolicemensUnion

** Ultimately subverted with Sitka. Rather than a permanent Jewish homeland, it's a provisional land agreement only meant to last for sixty years. With the lease at its end, the land is set to revert back to American control. What will become of the Jews then, nobody knows.

* Ultimately subverted with Sitka. Rather than a permanent Jewish homeland, it's a provisional land agreement only meant to last for sixty years. With the lease at its end, the land is set to revert back to American control and, while the unnamed president believes that the Jews need to reclaim Israel, nobody's sure what will happen next.

* DysfunctionJunction: By the time the events of the novel, a considerable percentage of the remaining inhabitants of Sitka appear to be alcoholics or drug-addicts, religious fanatics, lunatics, messed-up loners and losers, suicidal death-seekers, the poor and desperate or some combination thereof. Possibly justified, as the novel takes place mere months before Sitka will no longer exist in it's current form and those who could probably made arrangements to be elsewhere long before it happened, which would presumably include most of the sane, well-adjusted people. And those who couldn't, even if they weren't particularly dysfunctional before, certainly have reason to be now.

* BuryYourGays: [[spoiler:Mendel Shpilman]]

** Sitka Jews are slangily referred to as "Icebergers" by American Jews, while Sitka Jews call American Jews "Mexicans" because they live South of the border (the ''Canadian'' border, that is).

%%* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Unusually for an AlternateHistory story the incumbent President of the United States is not named, nor is any description given. The reader is left to make up their own mind which conservative politician or Christian fundamentalist religious figure has risen to the top in this reality, if indeed it is someone we would recognise.

* [[RunawayBride Runaway Groom]]: [[spoiler:Mendel Shpilman.]]

* YiddishAsASecondLanguage: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] into Yiddish as a Primary Language. In a true flip of the trope, they use "American" phrases and [[ClusterFBomb curses]]. There's a handy Yiddish glossary in the novel, particularly helpful with the Sitka slang.

* JustBeforeTheEnd: Not in the apocalyptic sense typical for the setting (being a non-lethal and highly localized variant), but in an emotional sense for (almost) every Jewish character. The upcoming Reversion means the end of the Jewish district and most (if not almost all) residents will not be able to stay in the US once the territory is under their control, but neither do they have any emigration alternatives. Thus, many Jews don't know what exactly they are supposed to do and what will happen in a few months at all, and the book portrays the resulting feeling of all-pervasive uncertainty, emotional collapse and resignation very effectively. The best example is the police force itself, which is disintegrating rapidly as the events of the novel take place, so that, for instance, a report by the forensic pathologist is left uncompleted because said pathologist leaves the District, open cases are "blackflagged", i.e. closed without resolution, by police chiefs and no one besides Landsman actually cares about solving the mystery of Shpilman's murder (not even Berko, who's in it out of loyalty to Landsman rather than an actual interest in solving the case).

* WorkingWithTheEx:

* VitriolicBestBuds: Landsman and Berko Shemets share plenty of snark but are clearly each other's best friend beyond being cousins. Played with regarding Berko and Willie Dick, who are described in terms of being mortal enemies who hate each other so much that they weirdly seem closer than most ''actual'' best friends.

* WithFriendsLikeThese: Seen when Willie Dick, Berko Shemets and Meyer Landsman are in the same room together. There's a lot of antagonism due to personal and historical reasons, but it's obvious their work as policemen gives them a stronger bond than anyone.
%%* WorkingWithTheEx

%%* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters

* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: No actual Zeppelins appear, but early in the novel Landsman finds "a windup zeppelin" amongst other junk in a basement, in keeping with the AlternateHistory setting.

** In one scene, Berko's son watches an unnamed Yiddish-dubbed cartoon that's clearly meant to be ''DragonTales''.

* XMeetsY: Imagine ''VideoGame/TheShivah'' crossed with ''Film/{{Fargo}}''. With a hint of ''Literature/{{Fatherland}}'' dropped in.

* BrokenMasquerade

* ChessMotifs

* EnterStageWindow

* FilmNoir

* GladToBeAliveSex
* GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel: A rare [[InvertedTrope inversion]]. In this world's alternate timeline, Hitler got his ass kicked even ''harder'' that he did in our world. Among other changes, Germany was nuked in 1946 and the Holocaust killed only a third as many Jews as it did in RealLife. The book explores how these events (coupled with the collapse of Israel) complicate the lives of surviving Jews.

* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub

* MysteriousInformant

* TitleDrop

* WorkingWithTheEx

* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters

** OrsonWelles [[DifferentWorldDifferentMovies made his film]] of ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness''.

* TheNapoleon: Willie Dick, the 4'7" tall Tlingit cop, [[BadassBiker rides a 2/3 scale motorcycle]] and is generally described in terms that qualify him as a {{Badass}} of tall-tale proportions. Berko even {{Lampshades}} this, calling Dick "the emperor of the French."

* KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade [[spoiler: Naomi Landsman]]

** Germany was nuked in 1946 and Israel was destroyed after only 6 months during the first round of the ArabIsraeliWar.

* AlternateHistory: The point of divergence occurred in 1940, when Alaskan Delegate Anthony Diamond died in a car crash, thus allowing the US Congress to implement the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery_Report Slattery Report]] which opened Alaska to Jewish immigration. 4 million of the 6 million Jews who would have been killed in the Holocaust fled to Alaska, creating a vibrant and sprawling community centered around Sitka. Also, Germany was nuked in 1946 and Israel was destroyed after only 6 months during the first round of the ArabIsraeliWar. Other minor examples include the fact that OrsonWelles [[DifferentWorldDifferentMovies made his film]] of ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness''.
** Another major difference is a lengthy war between America and Cuba during the sixties.

* TheNapoleon: Willie Dick, the 4'7" tall Tlinglit cop, [[BadassBiker rides a 2/3 scale motorcycle]] and is generally described in terms that qualify him as a {{Badass}} of tall-tale proportions. Berko even {{Lampshades}} this, calling Dick "the emperor of the French."

* StylisticSuck: Alter Litvak's written messages are light on punctuation and feature the occasional grammatical error, because they're hastily jotted down while in conversation.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Unusually for an AlternateHistory story the incumbent President of the United States is not named, nor is any description given. The reader is left to make up their own mind which conservative politician or Christian fundamentalist religious figure has risen to the top in this reality.

* ParentalAbandonment: A lot of Landsman's issues with guilt, religion, cynicism and even chess can be traced back to the suicide of his father, a chess prodigy and Holocaust survivor. Since Landsman's father took his life the day after Landsman wrote him a letter begging him not to force Landsman to play chess, a game which Landsman hated but which was one of the few ways his father tried to connect with him, Landsman blamed himself as a child with numerous psychological issues resulting. [[spoiler: Ironically, as an adult Landsman would later find that letter unopened in his father's possessions, meaning he actually had nothing to do with it.]]

* DysfunctionJunction: By the time the events of the novel, a considerable percentage of the remaining inhabitants of Sitka appear to be alcoholics or drug-addicts, religious fanatics, lunatics, messed-up loners and losers, suicidal death-seekers, the poor and desperate or some combination thereof. Possibly justified, as the novel takes place mere months before Sitka will no longer exist in it's current form and those who could made arrangements to be elsewhere long before it happened, which would presumably include most of the sane, well-adjusted people.

* DysfunctionJunction: By the time the events of the novel, a considerable percentage of the remaining inhabitants of Sitka appear to be alcoholics or drug-addicts, religious fanatics, lunatics, messed-up loners and losers, suicidal death-seekers, the poor and desperate or some combination thereof. Possibly justified, as the novel takes place mere months before Sitka will no longer exist in it's current form and those who could made arrangements to be elsewhere long before it happened, which would presumably include most of the sane, well-adjusted people who were in touch with reality.

* NoodleIncident: A lot of the details of the AlternateHistory the novel is set in are alluded to, but not actually described.